PyPI vs. Python vs. fpm vs. imageio Comparison Chart

PyPI is the official repository for Python software packages, hosting hundreds of thousands of projects that developers can publish and users can discover and install. It supports both source distributions (“sdists”) and pre-built binary “wheels”, allowing packages to include native extensions for different platforms. Projects on PyPI consist of multiple releases, each of which can include various files for different operating systems or Python versions. Metadata for each package includes things like version number, dependencies, licensing, classifiers, description (including rendering Markdown or reStructuredText), and other information that tools like pip use to resolve, download, and install the correct package. PyPI provides search and filtering based on package metadata, letting users find what they need via keywords, compatibility, or other package attributes.

fpm is a tool that lets you easily create packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, Arch Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and more! fpm isn’t a new packaging system, it’s a tool to help you make packages for existing systems with less effort. It does this by offering a command-line interface to allow you to create packages easily. FPM is written in ruby and can be installed using gem. For some package formats (like rpm and snap), you will need certain packages installed to build them. Some package formats require other tools to be installed on your machine to be built; especially if you are building a package for another operating system/distribution. FPM takes your program and builds packages that can be installed easily on various operating systems. It can take any nodejs package, ruby gem, or even a python package and turn it into a deb, rpm, pacman, etc. package.